In Opposition to Roses
by Kanna-Ophelia
Summary: Sometimes a rose is simply a flower, and a Champion and her Bride merely girls. UtenaXAnthy with a touch of UtenaXJuri. Complete.
1. Crushed Petals

_Set just after Utena delivers the roses. It was originally written for Seanan for the Yultide Project._

**In Opposition to Roses**  
  
When Utena lifted her satchel, she found the white rose flattened underneath. She hadn't even noticed it on the pillow when she flung her satchel down... earlier. Before delivering the roses.   
  
She wasn't quite sure what a rose was doing there. A gift from Anthy perhaps, because doing something both as sweet and as tactless as giving Utena her duel flower would be just like Anthy, and impossible to resent because it was... Anthy. It was a pity Utena hadn't noticed the flower, but then, Anthy hadn't been on her mind as anything more than a niggling guilt, hastily pushed away. Utena put her satchel on the floor, and picked up the rose.   
  
It wasn't too bad, after all. A little worn, but still with a certain beauty. Utena folded down cross-legged onto the mattress and made a futile attempt pull the petals back into place, the faint spiciness of the crushed petals hanging in the air. She vaguely remembered having learned or imagined that white roses were scentless, but this rose certainly was not. After all, Utena had never paid much attention to things like flowers, not enough to be sure. The petals hung loosely on the damaged rose, the centre falling slightly open to reveal the yellow tendrils of the centre. Funny - it was the only ruined rose she had seen since coming to Ohtori Academy. Anthy's rose garden only produced perfect blooms.   
  
Utena idly wondered how that was possible, as her fingers plucked vaguely at the flower. Surely there were imperfect blooms sometimes, or edges that withered and browned. She idly wondered what Anthy did with them. Utena supposed she took out sharp scissors and cut away any flawed flowers from her garden, her delicate fingers dealing death to any blooms that didn't come up to her ideals, were of no use to her. What, then, did a girl who kept old parade balloons do with the slaughtered flowers?   
  
A petal came loose in Utena's fingers, and she hastily cast the rose aside before she could do any further damage. Not, however, before the obvious connection came into her mind.   
  
_Deflowered._  
  
She idly put the loosened petal in her mouth and chewed it, the slightly sour taste, as unlike the scent of roses as was possible to imagine, rolling in her mouth. It was wrong, all wrong, to think of the rose on her pillow as, well, meaning something. It was only Ohtori and the ludicrous way everyone went around acting as if everything they did was significant, as if it had some kind of bizarre symbolic purpose beyond Utena's grasp, that made her think nonsense like that. It was just a flower, for heaven's sake. She was becoming infected by Anthy's odd ways.   
  
If she really wanted to drag flowers into it, far better to think of Akio in terms of blossoming, of sudden sweet blinding intensity, rather than of petals falling from a once-beautiful rose. She wanted to feel she'd gained something, not lost it.   
  
It had been beautiful. Truly beautiful. The slide of skin against clean cotton sheets, hands burning on her skin, the blissful intensity of pain, even the organic messiness of it something divine and incandescent. Most beautiful of all had been letting go, no longer fighting against the flow of events and her life, just allowing herself to feel and be. It wasn't  
fair that it should melt into ugliness and emptiness only a few brief hours later.   
  
Stupid and childish to feel regret over your first time. Even if there was nothing truly beautiful about - her mind shied away from the harsh words and then determinedly returned to them - fucking your friend's brother behind his fiancee's back.   
  
She opened her eyes at the sound of footsteps, letting the remains of the petal slide down her throat.   
  
"Where have you been, Himemiya?" She could hear the discordant accusation in her own voice. _Where have you been, Himemiya, why weren't you with me, why didn't you stop me, why didn't you save me from yourself?_ Unfair, unfair of her, and speaking unkindly to Anthy was like shoving a kitten who was already kicked from pillar to post several times a day.   
  
Anthy pulled a handful of pins from her hair, one long coil of violet escaping, inches away from being beautiful enough to steal Utena's breath.  
  
"I was with my brother, Miss Utena. Is there a problem?"   
  
It was all Utena could do not to press her hands to her burning cheeks, like the heroine in a romance comic. She shifted her gaze to the rose instead. She was no good at this kind of thing, and muscles unaccustomed to the use to which they had been put ached. Utena felt the almost overwhelming desire to flee the room for the basketball court, work it all  
out into the familiar, wholesome ache of having run and leaped until exhausted.   
  
Instead, she sat in a bedroom, looking at a damaged rose and talking to a Rose Bride. Exactly when had her life become such utter... nonsense?   
  
"Before that." Utena knew very well that Akio had not been with his sister very long that night; the awareness made her stomach dip and curl.   
  
"I was watering the roses."   
  
Utena could actually taste the words _All night?_ in her mouth, unless that was the dying taste of the rose petal, but she swallowed against it. She had no intention of making herself ridiculous, like a cuckolded husband in a soap opera.   
  
_I'm not the one with the right to be jealous._  
  
She tried to tell herself that thought had something to do with Kanae, but she was oddly empty of feeling regarding Akio's fiance. If she was honest with herself, part of the feeling of being soiled was to do with Anthy, the feeling of having betrayed her; but how? Anthy was Akio's sister, not his lover.   
  
There was something in that thought, but it flickered away.   
  
"Have I done something wrong, Miss Utena? Have I distressed you in some way?" No hint of whining, just deference and almost impersonal concern.   
  
Looking at the rose had become something past endurance, so for lack of anywhere else to direct her gaze, Utena turned back to her friend. Her already hot cheeks seared. For all Anthy's painfully apparent shyness, she had no real sense of modesty at all, at least around Utena. She had paused midway in pulling her nightgown over her head, the gown caught up over one breast, so that Utena could see the aureole almost black against the sap-brown of Anthy's skin, the childish white panties somehow making her look even more naked than the natural nudity of bathing together. Utena screwed her eyes shut like a little girl, and then had an even more aggravatingly immature desire to peek.   
  
Anthy was so very pretty.   
  
"Don't worry, Himemiya. It's nothing. Come to bed, will you?" And that was quite the wrong thing to say when she was trying not to react to the sight of exposed skin, but Anthy said nothing that showed any sign of recognising her friend's queer behaviour. Utena, sharply conscious behind her closed eyelids, heard the rustle of a nightgown falling into place, the click of spectacles being laid on a table. It would be safe to look,  
now. But it was easier to lie with her eyes closed, let her hand reach out with the familiarity of long custom, the warmth of Anthy's hand enfolding hers.   
  
Odd how much the ritual of sleeping hand in hand had come to mean to a girl who had never been particularly sentimental about her friends - no Wakaba, at least. When she had been lying in Akio's bed... afterwards... she had been painfully conscious of the fact that he didn't hold her hand. His hand would feel all wrong, though - too big, the fingers not long and slender enough. His hand was almost as graceful as a woman's, but that _almost_ was significant.   
  
Anthy's hand, on the other... hand... fit Utena's simply perfectly. It was utterly natural to have her fingers would around Anthy's, yet there was always the odd tender lurch she'd felt that very first time, waking with her head on the table to find Anthy's hand on hers, turning her own to link their fingers...   
  
She would have done anything to keep and protect her friend at that moment. She needed to hold onto that thought, to the certain knowledge that looking after Anthy was somehow her job.   
  
What would Anthy think if she knew Utena had crushed the white rose?   
  
When she thought about it, she was almost sure that it would mean nothing to Anthy at all; that she would smile at with beautiful blank eyes and not care in the slightest. The thought was somehow horrible, like the memory of Anthy calmly watering her roses as Touga kissed some anonymous girl in  
the rose garden. Utena thought she had killed that memory, but it still hurt, with the agonising throb of a wound infected by outrage and turned poisonous by confusion.   
  
She opened her eyes at last, meeting Anthy's gentle smile, lips curving softly below sleepy eyes. It was so intimate, sleeping face to face like this, but their bodies stretched out in opposite directions, as positive a guarantee of virtue as sleeping with a sword between them. Not that they  
needed anything of the kind, of course. Utena wasn't in the habit of molesting her female friends, no matter how lovely their lips looked gently pressed together, and Anthy...   
  
...Anthy would probably cheerfully agree to anything Utena suggested, and in a way, that was precisely why a sword wasn't required.   
  
Well, that and the fact that Anthy was a girl, of course. Because Utena might acknowledge girls were beautiful, kissable, aroused longing in her breast, but that was a perfectly normal stage of development, and didn't mean she'd  
want to do anything about it... It was only the memory of Akio hanging over her that made everything seem so erotic tonight. Anthy's skin was the exact shade of her brother's, although it encompassed much more touchable curves...   
  
"Himemiya?"   
  
"Yes?" Anthy's impossibly long lashes, which had been dropping slowly, fluttered open again. It had to be a natural gesture, and not a deliberate pose of femininity. There was nothing false or calculated about Anthy. And it was unnervingly intimate, now Utena came to think of it, lying with her face less than a hand-span from someone else's. At least when the other person was looking at her with such an air of polite enquiry.   
  
"Do you think it is... unforgivable... for someone who is engaged to sleep with someone else?" In the face of Anthy's purity it was easier, somehow, to ask if Akio had been wicked than if she had.  
  
There was a long pause, and Utena couldn't read Anthy's expression at all.  
  
"I am the Rose Bride. If you choose to be with someone else, as is your right, we are still engaged." Sweet and simple, like Anthy always was when she was - not arguing with her. Contradicting her, or offering a statement she fully expected to be contradicted, but never quite arguing. "As for me, I belong to you." Her lashes drooped just a little, the tiny movement somehow the most pathetic thing Utena had ever seen.   
  
"I didn't mean that." Utena bit her lip in frustration. It was useless, in the face of that sad, passive green stare, to protest that she had been thinking of Akio and Kanae, that being engaged to Anthy was only a game played against her will and not something real. Two girls could never be truly engaged. "This has nothing to do with that Rose Bride nonsense."   
  
There was no blame on the smooth brown face, only the same accepting suffering it wore when Nanami's friends raised their hands to her, and that turned her own sense of betrayal sour in Utena's mouth. No matter how often she swore that she wouldn't let anyone else hurt Anthy, she went and  
tore her to pieces herself by blurting out all her questions without thinking how they would sound.   
  
"Himemiya, I'm sorry..." She was awkward in the face of that terribly polite pain.   
  
"I am the one who is sorry, Utena-sama. I didn't fully realise you suffered from the lack of sexual contact. It was careless of me - as your fiancee, I should have attempted to supply your need." The unhappiness shifted from Anthy's face as easily as the sun breaking out through clouds. As her free hand reached up to touch Utena's breasts through her pyjamas - as her brother had, oh God, not that thought - Anthy's expression was as open and happy as that of a child who has been praised by her teacher. She wriggled closer and twisted around a little, again childlike in the movement, so her face was not opposed to Utena's but at some queer half-angle as she leaned over, her breath warm on Utena's lips -   
  
"Himemiya, stop it!" Utena dropped the hand in hers and pushed back, propelling herself away with two hands on the mattress. She scrambled to a sitting position. "Have you gone crazy?"   
  
Anthy lay very still on the mattress, her hair fanned out in a dark shadow, although not as dark as the shadows in her eyes.   
  
Utena was shaking. She was disgusted, she told herself, taken aback... and there was no way at all she would give into the impulse to stoop down and reclaim that dark, lovely mouth, not after having spent the evening with the girl's brother. The idea was sickening.   
  
"I - I'm going for a walk." Utena grabbed a dressing gown and stalked out, belting it around her. Stupid to go roaming the schools at night in her pyjamas, but she wasn't going to get changed in that room, and any exercise was better than none.  
  
The night air would take away the scent of roses.   
  
At least she was fortunate enough not to meet Akio on the way. It saved... embarrassment.   
  
She walked slowly at first, but her steps sped up to meet the distracted beating of her own heart and before she knew it she was covering the ground in quick, loping steps. The world began to resettle to something like normality as she ran; her legs stretched obediently, muscles moving under her own power, hair streaming in the wind she created with her own passing and lungs pumping air cleanly. The heavy scent of roses hung on the air, as it had done ever since she had come to Ohtori, but she had become so used to it that she barely registered it, certainly did not regard it as abnormal.   
  
She no longer remembered what truly pure air tasted like.   
  
At first her steps took her towards Wakaba's dormitory. As she came closer, a certain reluctance took hold of her. It wasn't that Wakaba would resent being woken by her best friend. It was that Wakaba was so terribly candid in her crushes, her attraction to Akio as straightforward and joyful as her infatuation with Utena herself. Utena found she couldn't go to her best friend with the new weight of all-but-adultery and her confused feelings for the siblings, any more than she was willing turn the mulch around a rosebush's roots over to expose the crawling things to the sunlight.   
  
And that was a disgustingly ungracious way to think of two people as kind and important to her as Akio and Anthy. Utena was thoroughly ashamed of herself, as well as increasingly alarmed with how thoroughly roses had taken hold of her brain.   
  
Nevertheless, she allowed her feet to turn her away from Wakaba's dormitory, and towards the courtyard. 

**tbc**


	2. Moonlight in the Courtyard

Her feet faltered as she approached the fountain. She had expected the school to be empty, given certain rules about curfews and her own embarrassed care not to go near the places used for... romance. She was not prepared to find - _an angel,_ her confused mind prompted, taking in the tall white figure and long curls. _Arisugawa Juri,_ her common sense snapped back. _No angel, she or anyone else on the Student Council. You have enough problems without romanticising them, Tenjou.  
  
_It couldn't be denied that Juri looked angelic, the moonlight draining her reddish hair to pale gold, her nightgown shimmering to silver through the spray of water. Not a Christmas card angel, though. Something wilder, more pure, colder. Beautiful...   
  
Utena trotted to a halt beside the older girl. Juri didn't bother to acknowledge her. Her eyes, grey rather than green in this light, were fixed on a point beyond the fountain. Utena followed her gaze, curious to see what the older girl was watching with such intensity that her shoulders trembled, but there was no one and nothing there.   
  
Utena felt a sudden stab of exasperation. This was just... typical of what her life had become. No one in the Student Council could just stand there enjoying a pretty scene like a nice, normal person, oh no, they had to pause dramatically like some pre-Raphaelite maiden watching ghostly visions. Why couldn't anyone at Ohtori behave naturally for one moment, instead of every word and gesture being replete with symbolic meaning? Juri was a schoolgirl, for heaven's sake, not a figure in some romantic tragedy.   
  
She was actually holding what was surely a golden-orange rose between languid fingers. That, Utena felt, was absolutely the last straw.   
  
"What are you looking for?" she asked, her voice deliberately pitched loudly enough to break the spell and lively for good measure. She sounded unsettlingly like Wakaba.   
  
Juri started, turning towards her. Utena noted with satisfaction that the sad, otherworldly expression had sharpened into irritation.  
  
"Perhaps... for a prince to transport me out of this labyrinth," Juri said, but the dreamy mood had been broken and the effect fell flat. Utena felt perfectly justified in chuckling.   
  
"You know Mr. Ohtori is the only one with a car here, unless you want to ride in Touga's sidecar," she said cheerfully, despite the difficulty of referring to Akio so formally. "Otherwise, I'd offer myself."   
  
Juri gave her a pained look and turned back to the fountain, twisting the rose in fingertips that were longer and more slender than a girl so dedicated to fighting deserved to own.   
  
Utena was determined not to let her fall back into her trance. She needed conversation, she decided, and she liked Juri well enough. Juri was athletic and intelligent and had undeniable style, and it was impossible not to admire her. They might even have been friends, if Juri wasn't the Student Council secretary and a Duellist, cast as Utena's enemy. But then there was poor Shiori to consider; no one quite understood why Juri was so cold to her once-dear friend. Shiori seemed so sweet and gentle, too... She reminded Utena of Anthy, in her shyness and her dependence on one particular friend, and her particular friend had openly cast her aside as soon as she had started to show signs of relating to other people.   
  
The indignation that went along with that thought prompted her to ask how the plum-haired girl was.   
  
"Should I know?" Juri's voice was tired.   
  
"I think you do," Utena said slowly. "You may have quarrelled with her, but I don't think you're much good at letting go. If it's not disrespectful of me to say so," she added hastily, suddenly remembering she was addressing her senior.   
  
Juri laughed, but the sound wasn't exactly vivacious. "She's miserable, I think, but there's nothing I can do about that." The hardness of her words were softened somehow, either by her tone or by the moonlight. "And how is the Rose Bride?"   
  
"Don't call her that." Utena felt blood pulse behind her ears, and forced her anger down, only barely managing to avoid making herself look even sillier by attempting to order Juri not to speak of Anthy in that contemptuous tone. "Himemiya is... much the same as usual."   
  
Juri laughed again at that, and the mood relaxed a little. "I suppose that's all that can be said." She smiled, switching on her considerable charm with the flash of teeth. "As we are both breaking curfew, let's sit together. I wouldn't mind some company. I suppose I can be assured that I won't receive an ungentlemanly kick in the stomach, tonight at least?"   
  
Utena's face heated, but she resisted the urge to defend herself as she followed to a stone bench. She sprawled out, noting a second later how elegantly Juri sat with the folds of her nightgown around her, and couldn't decide if it would be more or less graceful if she tried to switch to a less tomboyish posture. She was unused to feeling so uncertain  
of herself. She didn't enjoy it much.   
  
"Utena." Juri was staring at the fountain again, her expression sad, but it was a normal human sadness this time, no excessive drama about it. "I'm sorry sometimes, you know. You're a nice girl, and you shouldn't have been caught up in all this."   
  
"It's Himemiya you should apologise to."   
  
Juri sighed. "I don't think you quite understand about your Himemiya's role in all this, Utena."   
  
"How am I supposed to understand if no one tells me?" Utena snapped.   
  
Juri ignored the implied question, but Utena had enough experience with the Student Council not to expect an answer in the first place. "Tell me... is she really your Himemiya, in fact?"   
  
"What do you mean?"   
  
Juri turned her head. Her eyes were shadowed in the moonlight, but her hand trailed slowly up Utena's arm, sliding over her shoulder to take her chin. She leaned down and in as she had once before, and like she had that other time, Utena tilted her chin up and breathed out slowly.   
  
This time, there was no violent grab for Utena's ring. Juri's lips closed over Utena's, moving with gentle pressure, parting them long before the shiveringly delicate touch of her tongue playing over the lips, pressing almost intangibly inside until Utena's tongue moved back in response. The girls sat motionless together except for the movements of their mouths, as if their bodies were held in stasis for the duration of the kiss.   
  
Utena's hands finally moved, reaching up to grasp Juri's shoulders and thrust her away. Juri fell back slightly on the seat, leaning back on her hands, showing no sign of breathlessness or confusion. The orange rose was still wound in her free hand.   
  
"Like that."   
  
Utena stared blankly at her. Her mouth still felt as if it had been caressed by velvet, and her heart was pounding painfully, echoed by a sharp quick pulse deep inside. One kiss had done this to her... and she looked at Juri's perfect face in the moonlight, and realised the older girl had done it in full knowledge of the result. This time her anger could not be damped down.   
  
"No! My love for Himemiya is pure -"   
  
"Pure and platonic, like sisters?" Juri laughed, and Utena felt stripped bare and naked, as if those knowing eyes could see her in Akio's bed. Juri lifted her hard, lovely face... and suddenly it crumpled into remorse. "I'm sorry. I thought you understood."   
  
Utena wasn't the most perceptive of girls, but even for her things could fall into place. Oddly enough, it was a relief to know Juri's cruelty towards Shiori wasn't arbitrary, wasn't perhaps meant as cruelty at all. She wanted to like Juri; it was as simple as that, and didn't necessarily have anything to do with the kiss. "I'm sorry too," she said awkwardly. "I didn't mean to push you aside. I thought... you were making fun of me."   
  
"I suppose I was," Juri said thoughtfully, considering the idea. "But I also thought... Perhaps I was looking for comfort, and thought I could give you some, as well. You're so uncomplicated, little prince." Her short laugh sounded in the empty courtyard. "But then, I suppose I'm not as complex as I like to think, either. Not in this, at least."   
  
Utena settled down again. Juri had retreated into melancholy again, and she was sorry for that. Perhaps she had reacted too quickly or too much.  
  
"Juri-sempai, how do you know? When you love your friend and... you know." Her voice stumbled on into the silence. "I mean, I couldn't love anyone in the world more than I love Wakaba, but..." Wakaba was sunlight to her where Anthy was air, she wanted to say, but it would sound stupid and pretentious, sound like something... a member of the Student Council would say. Even suspecting Juri would understand, she couldn't frame the words.   
  
"Don't you know?" A certain degree of scorn returned to Juri's voice.   
  
"Perhaps I do." She thought of Anthy's brown limbs against the white nightgown and the confused longings that swirled around the sight, the complicated hot sadness Anthy's joyless half-smile sometimes awoke in her. The illogical unshakeable conviction that Anthy was hers to protect no matter what, the distinct uneasiness she felt if they were apart for  
long... Her second half, and that didn't make any more sense than Anthy did, but perhaps it was unfair to demand that either emotions or girls played by logical rules.   
  
"But how can you feel that way about another girl?" She asked the question more for reassurance than information.   
  
Juri gave her a long, measured look that made Utena feel rather like she'd had a bare heel ground into her face. "You possess the Rose Bride. You tell me."   
  
Utena bit her lip. "I don't possess her, not like that. It's all wrong to act like a duel can make a living human being belong to someone. We're friends... our love is pure." The words hurt her heart with a kind of piercing light. _Our love is pure..._ She took in Juri's pitying, contemptuous expression, and an ugly thought struck her. "Is that why you  
duelled for the Rose Bride? Did you want Himemiya... like..." She felt too sickened to finish the sentence, whether with jealousy or disillusion.   
  
"You're a little fool." Juri snapped the stem of the rose in her hand, but her voice was more reflective than angry. "Do you know, I don't think I've ever hated and despised anyone in my life as much as I hate and despise Himemiya Anthy."   
  
"Don't talk about her that way!"   
  
"Well? Would you prefer that I confessed a secret desire for her, and challenged you to another duel to take her from you?" Juri held out the orange rose, her gaze challenging. Utena didn't answer, her fingernails digging into her palms, and Juri's laughter floated on the breeze. "I think you're not entirely honest, for a noble little prince." The orange rose fluttered from her own fingers.   
  
"Perhaps not." Utena was stung, but her lips were still warm from Juri's kiss, and the anger faded into bewilderment again. "I don't understand her at all, you know. Shouldn't loving someone mean you understand them?"   
  
"Not in my experience," Juri said drily, and Utena wished she had the right to ask the question.   
  
"It's not what I wanted." Thinking of Anthy's eyes, of her sweetness, she wasn't sure if she was speaking the truth.   
  
"Not your pretty fairytale of a prince on a white horse?"   
  
"Don't laugh at me!"   
  
"I'm not. Utena, this is all very hard on you, isn't it? You're too noble for these games. You should find some nice, ordinary girl who isn't involved in all of this, and leave the Rose Bride to her Duels."   
  
"Or a nice, ordinary boy?"   
  
"That's always a possibility," Juri said gravely, the corner of her mouth twitching. "It's a pity, really, that you and I... But what's the use? It's too late."   
  
Utena rested her head in her hands, her elbows propped on her knees. "I think... it's too late for me, too. I have to play this out to the end."   
  
"I'm sorry for that."   
  
"You don't need to be." Utena flung back her head suddenly. "But I won't play along. Himemiya is a nice, ordinary girl, who deserves to be happy... and I am, too. I have to remember that, no matter how it seems. I have to remember that, or I'll lose," she finished with conviction   
  
"Don't ask me to love the Rose Bride. It's beyond my powers," Juri said bitterly. "But perhaps, if you do, it will be enough." She stared at the fountain again, seeing whatever she saw through the glistening water.  
  
There was a long wordless moment, then Juri turned back to her. "To give you courage, little prince," she said quietly, and pressed her mouth against Utena's once more. This time, there was no deliberate sensuality, no calculated attempt to arouse, just the sweetness of two girls' mouths together, gentle and loving. There was guilt somewhere in the pit of Utena's stomach, but it would be ungracious, she told herself, to refuse this gift... And it was oh, so sweet.   
  
The kiss dropped away into smiles a breath away. Juri reached down and slapped Utena's hand lightly. "Go figure out what you want, Tenjou Utena."  
  
"I already have. Juri - thank you." She stumbled to her feet, wishing she could be more graceful under pressure. It was so easy to be graceful on the basketball court, or in the Duelling Arena, and Juri was never at a loss.   
  
The older girl sat unmoving, as Utena took the path back to the Chairman's house. Utena paid her no further heed. All that mattered was that she needed to see Anthy... She needed to see Anthy right now, if she stood a hope of undoing the confusion and ugliness of the night. Right now, everything seemed exquisitely simple. She and Anthy belonged together. The rest was a mistake... She'd make Anthy understand, and she'd look after her always, and everything would be how it should be. In the flush of Juri's last kiss, it all seemed easy.

**tbc**


	3. Like Water to a Flower

Her thoughts were interrupted by a pathetic chirping as she approached the building. She stopped, searching the shadows until she found a pair of bright little eyes, and smiled.   
  
"Hello, little guy." She scooped ChuChu up and tucked him under her arm. "What are you doing out here all alone?"   
  
"Chuuu." The creature seemed to be trying very earnestly to communicate something, but Utena had no idea what. Probably just his terror of the dark. His warmth was comforting, though, something quite apart from Juri's warmth, safe and undemanding. She talked to him softly as she made her way  
back to Akio's quarters, the little thing snuggling into her protective grip.   
  
"Let's not wake your mistress, okay, ChuChu? I can apologise to her in the morning. Oh, ChuChu, it's been such a day... Maybe when I wake up it will all be a dream, and I won't mess it all up again."   
  
Even as she said it, it occurred to her, with the simplicity of absolute certainty, that Anthy would be awake when she went back to the room. Anthy would know exactly what had happened... all Utena's guilt, her dreadful romantic fumblings laid out for her. Well, she could deal with that. Now,  
with the new knowledge burning in her heart... her feet sped up, until she was flying across the school grounds again, ignoring ChuChu's complaints.  
  
All she wanted was to reach Anthy, without encountering anyone else. It felt like every heartbeat counted.   
  
She flung open the doors to their rooms, closed it behind her, and turned, confessions of all kinds on her lips.   
  
"Welcome back, Miss Utena. Oh, you found ChuChu!"   
  
The words spilt unsaid in Utena's breath. Somewhere in the back of her mind she had pictured Anthy curled in a pathetic little ball, sobbing, to be gathered up and apologised to and kissed into forgiveness, kissing everything better like a prince - no, like a mother. Passionate grief and betrayal, passionate reconciliation. At worst, she had imagined Anthy sleeping like an angel, traces of tears on her cheeks.   
  
Somehow she hadn't expected a mild smile and a polite, seemingly cheerful greeting, as if nothing awkward had occurred between them.   
  
"Himemiya, I..." Somewhere in the welter of love and guilt, Utena felt distinctly annoyed at the wreck of her dramatic reconciliation. Annoyed, and almost completely at a loss.   
  
Anthy's hair was still down in heavy jacaranda-purple waves, but she'd replaced her spectacles, apparently in order to watch her little portable television set. Utena glanced over to see what had caught Anthy's fancy enough for her to stay up watching it in the small hours of the morning, after such a distressing scene; but then, perhaps, to the Rose Bride it  
had not been distressing. It was a game show, currently involving naked middle aged men being tortured with scorpions and honey. Utena felt the familiar confusion that someone could be so very, very dear and precious, and still so alien.   
  
"I put the rose in water, Miss Utena. I thought it was ruined, but - see." Anthy pointed to something, but Utena didn't follow the gesture.   
  
"The rose isn't important, Himemiya."   
  
Anthy continued to look gravely at her from behind the circles of glass, while shrieks and wails rose from the television. "But it's still alive and beautiful. I thought that it was spoiled, but you see - it was too pure. It survived handling."   
  
Utena still didn't look at the flower. She knew Anthy was offering comfort in her odd way, but...   
  
...it was all _stupid,_ she decided. Unimportant. She'd made mistakes, and she was confused, but roses were just pretty flowers with a nice smell, not meaningful in any way, and she...   
  
"No! No, no, no!" ChuChu leapt from her hands, startled by the shout. She let him go.   
  
"Is something wrong, Miss Utena?" That open, questioning gaze hurt, but she wouldn't lose her courage. She dropped to her knees, and took Anthy's hands. Anthy's hands lay limply in hers, so she tightened her own grasp to compensate.   
  
"Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Tenjou Utena. I go to Ohtori Academy, where I'm on the athletics team and the basketball team, I'm usually good at schoolwork but I haven't been doing so well lately, my parents are dead but I have an aunt, I like horses, and I..." Oh, damn, there had to be more interesting things about her than that. "My best friends are Shinohara Wakaba and Himemiya Anthy." She let one of her death-grips loose, and raised a hand to touch Anthy's cheek, letting her palm curve against her chin, her fingers circle against the cheekbone. "Tell me who _you_ are."   
  
She was almost there. The hand in hers was flexing, the fingers curling around her own, Anthy's other hand coming to wrap around both. She wished she could read the eyes behind the glasses. She wished she could force Anthy to understand. She felt if now, now, she managed to reach the real girl, none of this Champion and Bride nonsense, it would be possible.   
  
"I am the Rose Bride." Anthy seemed uncertain, despite the remote smile still lingering on her lips.   
  
"No. You are Himemiya Anthy. You like animals better than people, you feel sorry for deflated balloons. You can't concentrate when you study, but you can watch the shopping channel for hours at a time, and you're good at housework. You're just a schoolgirl. You have no parents, but a...  
an older brother... and not enough friends, but you do have me. Always, always you have me." Now or never. "And - I love you. I love you so _much._" It came out with the rush of something she had always known and had been waiting to say.   
  
"Miss Utena..." Anthy's eyes were sad, so sad they broke Utena's heart.   
  
"Tell me, Himemiya, you and I - what kind of friends are we?"   
  
There was no answer. Utena squeezed her eyes shut like a child, and leaned forward. Anthy's lips were bitter and salty, as if she had been sucking grapefruit laced with salt, or as if she had been crying after all. It was a simple kiss, just the pressure of her mouth against another's and lingering just a second too long to pass as friendship, and it felt as  
natural as running, as lying on the grass under hot sun, as plunging into cool water... It was almost a surprise when their lips parted and Utena realised her heart was hammering and she couldn't quite breathe.   
  
When her eyes opened, Anthy was looking at her, very still and quiet. "Do you wish me to kiss you back?"   
  
"Only if you really want to." She tried to smile, as if it wasn't important, as if her heart wasn't hammering so hard that it felt like a knife being stabbed against her backbone. "You, just a girl... kissing another girl."   
  
The tears rose and spilt from Anthy's eyes so quickly that there seemed no buildup, just sudden droplets caught by the rim of her glasses and making the sides of her nose damp. She flung her arms around Utena's neck like a child, but the mouth that caught at Utena's was not a child's mouth, not in the way it clung to her lips and let the tongue dart against hers,  
kissing, kissing...   
  
Anthy drew away abruptly and let her face fall against Utena's neck. Utena felt the wetness of tears mingled with the kisses, and she crushed her tight, caressing silky hair and the bones of Anthy's back tangible through the night gown and everything she could touch, could love.   
  
"Himemiya... my sweet Himemiya... I'm so sorry. I'll never let you go again."   
  
Anthy made a noise deep in her throat. "You don't understand what you're promising."   
  
"I do! And I'll never abandon you - never. You don't need to be afraid. I want you to forget all that, everything else, just be... my Himemiya. We'll never be apart again." Someone had said that to her, once... Well, she'd make it come true.   
  
Anthy pushed up on her hands. Her mouth was twisted in something like pain. "Then make me forget... love me." Her head fell, her lips seeking out Utena's earlobe, spreading wetness and fire all at once, as if oil didn't burn for one brief second but on and on, passing into Utena's veins as it flamed. "Love me... please..."   
  
"Do you care for me at all, Himemiya?" The words came edged with more fear and desperation than she intended. Of course Anthy cared; she was so sweet and gentle and giving. And so incalculable...   
  
"Yes - I love you, I love you, I love you so much." No false calmness now, only something close to tragedy and defiance all at once.   
  
"No need to say it as if you're announcing a death." Utena's attempt to giggle fell flat, and she felt desperate still. Anthy's words sent her breathless, but they were somehow not in the least reassuring. She didn't understand why Anthy seemed so unhappy, when they should both be so gloriously content, having found each other. "Just kiss me instead..."   
  
Anthy responded with something close to ferocity. They fell magainst the bed and tangled together there as gracelesssly and passionately and perfectly as their lips and tongues tangled, hands in hair and pushing through robes and night dresses and pyjamas, the awkwardness of knees banging against thighs and slippered feet against shins mingling with the perfect way their breasts pressed together, softness against softness.  
  
Anthy felt so fragile, despite the hardness of her elbow where it caught Utena's side, so delicate and feminine and perfect... Utena kissed her as if she was drowning and Anthy was her only source of oxygen, and Anthy kissed back as if she was stealing her soul... had stolen it already, Utena dazedly thought. Other kisses faded into their proper perspective,  
and there was only here, only now - her Himemiya, and the sharpness of spectacle rims pressing under her own eye when she changed angles in an attempt to kiss even deeper. Everything else, everyone else faded away. It didn't matter that this wasn't her first time, if Anthy had given herself to other Champions. She and Anthy together were all that mattered.   
  
"Miss Utena... please." Urgent hands caressing her through her pyjamas, and she was suddenly nervous even as her nipples responded to the touch. "I need you to be with me tonight."   
  
And how could she refuse, when Anthy so rarely asked for anything?   
  
Later, much later, she drifted off into sleep, hand in hand with her beloved. Anthy lay on her side and watched her, holding her hand very tightly as Utena's face relaxed into slumber.   
  
"I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry. Please forgive me," Anthy whispered. Not that it mattered if she spoke aloud. Utena wouldn't have known if the apology was aimed at herself or at someone else, or what it was for, in any case. Anthy wasn't quite sure herself. She only knew that remorse was twisting at her heart.   
  
There was only one thing she had the power to do to make up for her moment of weakness, and she did it. She didn't even weep. Pain had merged into pain for too many years for tears to be of much help.   
  
She kissed Utena's cheek, very tenderly, wondering at herself for the gesture.  
  
Anthy went to sleep, ChuChu cuddled against her knee. He was a little comfort. Not much, but a little.   
  
Utena woke later in the night, confused in the darkness, her hand empty.   
  
She lay listening to Anthy's quiet breathing, letting it calm her. She ached inside and... oh, Akio. Shame flooded her. But she'd come back up to her room, and she and Anthy had... talked... and Juri, why did she think she'd spoken to Juri? Juri was the last person she'd confide in about her love life, such as it was. There was a sudden flood of memory, of soft skin and softer kisses, but that was only a dream. She'd never really do anything like that. Not after Akio.  
  
She shouldn't be confused into thinking emulating a prince meant loving princesses. She was just an ordinary girl, and she'd done something she probably shouldn't have, with a very attractive and nice boy. That was all. And she loved Anthy, but her love was pure. Only her dreams tricked her into thinking it could ever be... something else.   
  
Love was a further, unnecessary complication in a life filled with school and Duels. She'd be a little wary with Akio from now on, and stick with Anthy and Wakaba.   
  
Friendship was so much sweeter and simpler. It could be trusted.   
  
Utena reached for Anthy's hand again, and drifted off to sleep, the scent of roses in the air.**end**


End file.
